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Warren Mears
Warren Mears is a fictional character that is portrayed by Adam Busch in the American television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The character also appears in canonical comic book series continuation of that series. He is the main antagonist in season six, until Willow turns to her dark side. Biography Early life Warren grew up in Sunnydale, California. In school, he excelled in science and technology,"I Was Made to Love You" but was bullied by his peers, including a jock named Frankie."Seeing Red" As a teenager, he attended Sunnydale High for a semester before moving on to a tech college in Dutton. However, he continued to be plagued by loneliness and began to apply his technological skills to solve the problem. Warren built an ideal robot girlfriend named April, who was programmed to love and obey him. He assumed that he would love her in return, but grew bored of how easy and predictable things were with her. Instead, he met and fell in love with Katrina Silber, a strong-minded girl in his engineering seminar, and the pair began dating. However, Warren was unable to bring himself to break up with April, so he went home for spring break without her, hoping that her batteries would run out. April followed Warren and Katrina to Sunnydale, where she proceeded to question everyone she met about Warren's whereabouts. This caught the attention of the Scooby Gang including the Slayer, Buffy Summers. When April's behavior grew erratic and violent, Buffy tracked Warren down and confronted him. He explained that April must have been recharging her batteries somehow, and Buffy became concerned about the danger she posed. When Katrina told April that Warren was her boyfriend, the robot angrily attacked her. Buffy and Warren showed up just in time to save her life. Warren admitted to April that he didn't love her, and she reacted violently. As she and Buffy began to fight, Katrina realized that April was a robot and left Warren in disgust. He ran after her, leaving Buffy to deal with April, whose batteries finally ran out. Warren was later approached by the vampire Spike, who harbored a romantic obsession with Buffy. Spike forced Warren to build a robotic version of the Slayer for him to have sex with before he supposedly skipped town."Intervention" The Trio Warren resurfaced "Flooded" as part of the Nerd Trio, along with Jonathan and Andrew. The Trio were little more than a criminal group who strove to take over Sunnydale, though most of their plans revolved around neutralizing Buffy, who, as the Slayer, was the one thing standing in their way. Despite his previously passive tendencies, Warren was clearly the leader of the Trio, dominant over Jonathan and Andrew, as well as more willing than the other two nerds to take real risks and possibly do real harm to people. Warren showed his true colors as a dangerous, misogynistic individual. When Katrina reappeared, Warren used an enslavement device to make her obey his will. When she resisted the device, Warren attacked and accidentally killed her. Unmoved, he hatched a scheme using demons that cause temporal disturbances to confuse Buffy into thinking she was responsible for Katrina's death. His plan nearly succeeded, but just as Buffy was about to turn herself into the police, she overheard them identify Katrina's body and immediately realized the truth, subsequently vowing to bring Warren to justice."Dead Things" After Katrina's death, Jonathan became increasingly unhappy with Warren's lack of conscience. Warren plotted with Andrew, who was enamored with him, to ditch Jonathan. Additionally, Warren began to dominate his teammates, reserving the usage of any scientific devices and/or mystical artifacts they created or acquired for himself. Warren made a bid for major villain status when he stole a pair of magical orbs which gave him strength and invulnerability. He, Jonathan and Andrew attempted to rob an armored car, but Buffy arrived and the two fought, during which it was clear that Warren's Orb-granted strength made him more than a match for the Slayer, even taking the time to gloat that he had finally defeated the Slayer, something that many had tried (and failed) to accomplish in the past. In the midst of the fight, Jonathan appeared to attack Buffy, but in fact surreptitiously told her how to defeat Warren. Just as Warren had Buffy at his mercy and was about to finish her off, Buffy saw the pouch containing the orbs and destroyed them. As a contemptuous Buffy advanced, an enraged and humiliated Warren escaped with a jet pack, vowing that he would take Buffy down, and left Jonathan and Andrew to take the fall with the police. The next day, Warren, furious that Buffy had foiled his plans again, appeared in Buffy's backyard with a gun. He fired several shots, hitting Buffy, who only survived because of Willow's intervention, and accidentally killing Tara with a stray bullet. Willow, pushed by grief into dark magics, became Dark Willow. Upon discovering that Buffy had survived his assassination attempt and that Willow was after him, Warren immediately traveled to the hideout of sorcery dealer Rack, who supplied him with protection spells. Unfortunately, these were not enough to stop Willow, who eventually had Warren at her mercy. Although Warren desperately attempted to reason with Willow, his pleas fell upon deaf ears when Willow discovered that he was indeed responsible for Katrina's death. Willow tied him up with various tree branches and tortured him with the bullet she had extracted from Buffy's body, slowly forcing it into his chest before growing bored with him and telekinetically flaying him alive in front of her friends, before going on a rampage to kill Andrew and Jonathan (despite them not being involved). Warren's family buried the only thing they could find of him, his skin, in a Sunnydale cemetery.Return to Sunnydale, Part One Legacy The First Evil appeared as Warren, using his appearance mainly as a means of bending Andrew to its will. Using this method, the First Evil manipulated Andrew into murdering Jonathan,"Conversations with Dead People" in order to open the seal in the basement of the new Sunnydale High. He also assumed Warren's form along with those of the series' previous Big Bads, in reverse order (thus starting with Warren), to taunt Spike in the Season 7 premiere. A spell, cast by Amy, caused Willow, feeling guilty over moving on after Tara's death, to manifest her feelings by making her outwardly assume the appearance of her former victim. Additionally, Warren's personality began to overtake Willow's, causing her to slap Amy across the face while calling her a "dumb bitch" and buy a handgun with the intent to kill Buffy. However, with Kennedy's help, Willow was able to work through her grief and guilt and break the spell. Skinless The real Warren, however, returned months after the destruction of Sunnydale. Seconds after he was killed by Willow, Amy used her magic to resurrect Warren and keep him "alive" despite his lack of skin. He was the one who gave Amy the idea of cursing Willow in order to become him, and he bore a considerable grudge against both Willow (for flaying him) and Buffy (for ruining all of his schemes). Amy and Warren remained in the remnants of Sunnydale after the massive exodus and were present during the town's destruction. They remained for months in the crater, feeding on whatever edible substance they could find, until they were found by General Voll. In exchange for their aid against Buffy and the Slayers, Warren asked for a chance to exact revenge on Willow. He revealed the means of his survival as he lobotomized a captive Willow. When Buffy and Satsu arrived on a rescue mission, Amy teleported away, taking Warren with her. Willow healed instantaneously. Twilight was seen with Warren and Amy in some sort of military base, where Warren showed him something that would help get Twilight's job done: a missile, which targeted and destroyed the Scotland castle headquarters, with Xander looking on nearby, helplessly. While on the run from demons with his Italy squad, Andrew discovered a bleeding and skinless Warren underground who claimed to have been abandoned by Amy to die slowly as his magical skin wore off. Warren pleaded and seemed to take responsibility for some of the First's claims while under his guise, such as the instruction to kill Jonathan. However, this turned out to be a ruse as the goatmen demons descended and Andrew and his Slayers were forced to fight back and retreat to the Scotland Slayer Organization headquarters. Amy interrupted his ruse on purpose, believing it doomed to failure because it was the First who tempted Andrew before and Warren was "not the First." After being betrayed by Twilight and discovering his identity, Amy and Warren allied themselves with the Scoobies, and joined them in the fight for the Seed of Wonder in Sunnydale before being let go by General Voll. After traveling to Venice, Amy pondered over going back to help the Scoobies, but Warren adamantly refused, reminding Amy that Buffy and Willow are "the enemy." After Buffy destroyed the Seed and all magic, Warren, without Amy's magic to keep him alive, collapsed into a puddle of blood and bones. Amy collected Warren's remains and put them in a glass jar. After Angel successfully resurrected Rupert Giles, Amy approached the vampire In London to ask how he managed so she could resurrect Warren, Angel agreeing to at least consider the possibility due to his role in Warren's death and to limit the risk of Amy doing something particularly dangerous if she tried to do something that complex on her own. When Andrew returned to Sunnydale with the intent to resurrect Jonathan and Tara, it was revealed that the Trio made copies of their DNA and consciousness and saved them on USB flash drives; Andrew destroyed Warren's backup to ensure he would never return. Personality and traits Warren was a flat misogynist and killer. Though previously passive and helpful towards Buffy and the Scoobies, that soon changed when he formed the Trio with Andrew and Jonathan. From the very beginning, he was the one most willing to take real risks and cause people actual harm; for example, he willingly gave a M'Fashnik demon they hired to work for them Buffy's address and phone number and let him try to kill her, and was completely indifferent to Buffy's impending death as a result of the Invisibility Ray's radiation, even attempting to speed up the process during a confrontation. However, he showed his true colors after killing Katrina and attempting to frame Buffy, and later shooting Buffy and nearly killing her after she foiled his plans once again. After being saved from death by Amy, he developed a full-blown hatred of both Buffy and Willow for everything they had done to him, to the extent that he flatly refused to go back and help them in the battle for the Seed in Sunnydale despite the world being at risk. Powers and abilities Although Warren displayed no independent supernatural powers, he did possess a genius-level intellect, especially in the fields of technology and robotics. He was capable of building highly advanced robots which can easily pass for ordinary humans; even vampires, with their enhanced senses are incapable of differentiating the robots that Warren made from actual people, though their mannerisms and speech patterns were stilted and imperfect by human standards. The Buffybot he built successfully masqueraded as Buffy Summers for several weeks when the real Slayer was dead, even fooling Buffy's friends and family."Bargaining, Part One" Some of his other creations, which fuse magic and technology, included an Invisibility Ray;"Gone" a Freeze Ray;"Smashed" a small microchip capable of slowing time;"Life Serial" a Cerebral Dampener, which stripped the will of any female within its range, rendering her a slave;"Dead Things" and at least two jet packs. He also displayed enough knowledge of biology to perform a lobotomy."The Long Way Home, Part Four" Warren gained the power of the Orbs of Nezzla'khan, two orbs which grant him superhuman strength and invulnerability, respectively. In this state, he was more than a physical match for Buffy and easily overpowers her, until Jonathan betrayed him by telling her to destroy his orbs. During this time, he merely fought with sheer brute force, as opposed to the advanced martial arts skills that Buffy commonly employed. Behind the Scenes *He was portrayed by Adam Busch. *On the letters page of Buffy Season Eight #6, released September 2007, Whedon responds to a question by Kaylee Pansieri of Montréal, Québec asking how the First could have impersonated Warren to trick Andrew if he'd never died, by saying, "He was legally dead for like a second. Amy didn't tell him 'cause she didn't want to upset him. I forgot, okay?!" In the letters page for #26, Scott Allie reiterated that he was technically dead for a moment before Amy's magic kicked in, allowing the First to use his form. *Warren was the only Big Bad on the show to be entirely human and have no supernatural powers. The Master and Angelus were vampires, Mayor Wilkins was an immortal sorcerer, Adam was a cyborg demon, Glory was a goddess, and The First Evil was an otherworldly being. The only Little Bad without any kind of supernatural powers was Maggie Walsh. *He is one of the two Big Bads to be killed in an episode that isn't a season finale (although the comics see him revived), the other being Adam. ** He is also the only Big Bad to be killed by someone other than Buffy or Giles in the course of the ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. However, the comics see him revived and re-killed by Buffy. *Busch claims that he doesn't see Warren as simply a villain or a purely evil person. He explains that the character has various flaws and positives, and is always given the chance to redeem himself. "He's always given that moment where he can do the right thing that he never ever does." says Busch, "because he is flawed and he does have a lot of issues and an inability to communicate or talk to anyone or really explain what it is that he wants." Writer Jane Espenson draws comparisons between the characters of Buffy and Warren, claiming "When Buffy's talking with Warren about his break-up with April, she's actually identifying with him, because she did a lot of the same stuff with Riley that he did with April." Gallery Warrenorbs.png|Warren absorbing the powers from the Orbs of Nezzla'khan Warren.jpg|Warren attempting to murder Buffy WarrenSkinned.jpg|Dark Willow skinning Warren WarrenChen.jpg Appearances ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' ''Angel'' *"Orpheus" ''Buffy'' Season Eight * The Long Way Home * Time of Your Life * Retreat * Always Darkest * Twilight * Last Gleaming ''Buffy'' Season Nine * Apart (of Me), Part One * Apart (of Me), Part Two Angel & Faith ''Season Ten *Lost and Found, Part One'' (remains only) *''Lost and Found, Part Two'' *''Lost and Found, Part Five'' (remains only) Buffy Season Ten *''Return to Sunnydale, Part One'' *''Return to Sunnydale, Part Two '' References Category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters Category:Male characters in television Category:Fictional characters from Los Angeles County Category:Fictional inventors Category:Fictional murderers Category:Fictional private military members Category:Fictional roboticists Category:Fictional scientists Category:Fictional undead Category:Fictional deceased Category:Fictional psychopaths Category:Fictional characters introduced in 2001